Situation

While Heineken continues be seen as aspirational, it is increasingly being seen as a more mature brand for formal occasions.

As such, the brand is quickly losing traction amongst its younger consumers and is no longer the preferred beer brand they placed on their KTV, pub and dining tables when they meet with their friends.

• Brief

How to recapture these increasingly fluid and mobile Chinese millennials while staying true to who we are as a brand – and being the only beer brand with a global footprint in 192 countries

• Objectives

Business Objective

Re-establish Heineken as the top-of-mind choice that younger millennials

will place on their tables

Brand Objective

Leverage on our status as a global citizen creating world experiences

as a key differentiator versus our competitors and justify our premium

price point

Whenever a consumer holds a bottle of Heineken, they are enjoying far more than a great beer. It opens up a world of premium and exotic experiences from all over the world with one easily accessible device

– their mobile phone.

Turning every bottle of Heineken into a catalyst of world exploration

The Heineken World Teleporter

For starters, reigniting that much needed traction amongst younger Chinese millennials was key for the campaign.

We found something interesting.

This group loves travelling abroad.

They want to explore new and exotic experiences that would ultimately provide them with bragging rights on their social platforms or their next drinking session with buddies.

But while outbound Chinese travel has increased notably by 62% from 5 years ago, there’s a slight problem – 9 out of 10 of these millennials do not possess a passport.

This is our golden ticket.

We just need to find a way to connect the dots between “192 countries” and our stranded millennials to demonstrate value and create relevance.

Bringing the world to China and your drinking tables

With an average attention span of 5 seconds, we needed something truly groundbreaking to capture the eyes and mouth of Chinese millennials.

We launched the limited edition country bottles and promised China that every bottle comes packed with worldly experiences.

How?

Leveraging on AR and AI, we collaborated with China’s Taobao

(E-commerce) and Wechat (Social) to reach out to an audience

exceeding 2 billion.

All users had to do is scan the Heineken Star with their mobile APPs

to open up teleporters they can step into for exotic adventures from all around the world. Upon completion, they can then take ‘been there, done that’ selfies and share it on their social feed.

And in order to intercept our competition, we also created life-sized teleporters in high traffic bar areas to establish Heineken as top-of-mind before they step into their drinking session.

And results were as appetizing as their desire for worldly discoveries.

Engagement:

3.174 million teleportation travelers

(400% engagement rate over other AR campaigns in China)

1minutes and 20 seconds average engagement

Virality:

782.6 million impressions

29.7 million content engagements

Sales:

193% volume uplift on E-commerce

So while we might not be able to help them get a passport, we did manage to give these Chinese millennials a taste of the world!